Recently I attended a “speed-dating for your resume” event specific to my industry. At the event, I presented my resume to 5 recruiters/hiring managers who gave their feedback within quick, 2-minute timed sessions before a gong/buzzer sounded moving us along to the next station. All of the reviewers at the event specialize in UX recruiting. Needless to say, I took lots of notes.

In the playful spirit of usability testing, I thought I’d summarize my qualitative feedback from the 5 reviewers in table form:

Four out of five (80%) reviewers actually disliked or disagreed with my current title of “Usability Engineer”. Two of the five (40%) thought the “Skills” section should appear at the end of the resume, one (20%) thought it was fine near the top under the summary, and two (40%) did not comment on skills at all. About the “Executive Summary” section at the top, four out of five (80%) thought mine was too wordy and had too much text. One (20%) of the reviewers additionally wanted me to add links to work samples within the resume.

Based on these results, I will definitely modify the job title and shorten the summary. The feedback about the skills section seemed a bit subjective (reviewer’s personal preference), so I may or may not change that. And I’m not sure about the links to work samples. Seems like a functional idea, but only one reviewer mentioned it…I suppose it can’t hurt.